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Chocolate Pudding
Two quarts of milk, let boil; one-half cup of grated chocolate, three eggs, four tablespoons of sugar, four good tablespoons of cornstarch, a little salt.
Custard Sauce-One quart of milk, let boil; one small tablespoon of cornstarch, two eggs, two good tablespoons of sugar; flavor.
— Mrs. William Schubert
A cornstarch-thickened chocolate pudding of the boiled-and-molded kind, served cold under a thin pouring custard. The proportions are large and the sweetening is by modern standards very light.
- The hinge: slake the cornstarch firstFour tablespoons of cornstarch stirred into two quarts of boiling milk will seize into lumps. Whisk it smooth with about a cup of the cold milk before the rest goes on the heat, then add the slurry to the hot milk in a stream.
- Grated chocolateIn a book of this period this means unsweetened cake chocolate, grated on a box grater. Half a cup grated is roughly 2 ounces by weight. Modern unsweetened baking chocolate is the direct equivalent; cocoa powder is not, as it lacks the cocoa butter.
- SweetnessFour tablespoons of sugar across two quarts of milk and unsweetened chocolate makes a pudding most people today would find nearly savory. Half a cup to three-quarters is closer to current expectation, with little effect on the set.
- The eggsTemper them: whisk the beaten eggs with a ladle of the hot thickened milk, return the mixture to the pan, and cook two or three minutes more, stirring, so the starch and egg both set. Once the cornstarch has boiled it can take the eggs without curdling, but only with steady stirring.
- Cooking to the setCornstarch needs to reach a full boil to thicken properly — count roughly a minute of visible bubbling after it clears and thickens. Undercooked starch tastes chalky and the pudding will weep in the mold.
- MoldingRinse the mold or bowls with cold water before filling; the pudding will slip out cleanly. Chill at least four hours. Press plastic wrap on the surface if a skin is unwanted.
- The custard sauceThis is a thin stirred custard, poured over the unmolded pudding rather than baked. Keep it below a simmer once the eggs go in — it will thicken to coating consistency and no further. "Flavor" is left to the cook; vanilla, nutmeg, or a spoon of sherry would all suit.
- YieldTwo quarts of milk makes a great deal of pudding — twelve generous servings, or more in small cups. Halve everything, sauce included, for a household of four.
Cornstarch puddings like this one belong to the second half of the nineteenth century, when commercially milled cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple and displaced the older blancmanges thickened with isinglass, arrowroot or Irish moss. The result was a dessert any cook could make from milk, a box of starch and a few eggs, molded into a shape and turned out at the table with a sauce poured around it u2014 showy for very little money. The chocolate version depended on solid cake chocolate sold unsweetened for grating, and receipts of the era commonly call for "grated chocolate." A contribution signed with a married name, as here, is the usual form in a community cookbook of this sort: such books appear to gather what the women of one place put on their tables, and the pudding's two-quart scale may suggest it was made for a full house or a church supper rather than a small family.